The Long Odds of Reforming an Employee Who Is a ‘Destructive Hero’

Scott McGohan, chief of McGohan Brabender, has dealt with a destructive hero — a persona that once described him.CreditMaddie McGarvey for The New York Times

By John Grossmann

Oct. 29, 2014

The results are always blindingly good. That is why so many business owners are slow to recognize the dangers posed by employees sometimes known as destructive heroes.

At the building products company Dave Sullivan headed more than a decade ago, it was a top salesman who caused the havoc. “They’re always high performers, otherwise you’d never put up with their behavior,” Mr. Sullivan said. “This salesman was threatening his sales manager — ‘If you don’t do it the way I want, and if manufacturing won’t make what I want to sell, I’ll leave and take my customers with me.’ ”

Over the years, Mr. Sullivan has retold this story often, as part of courses and training seminars he has taught. Now president and managing partner at the Shamrock Group, a management consulting firm in Denver, he does not claim to have coined the term, but he said it occurred to him when envisioning a comic book superhero who vanquishes an archvillain, and leaves a city in ruins in the process.

Also known as brilliant jerks, destructive heroes are egotists, prima donnas, anything but team players. The drain on company morale can be stark. Why isn’t the boss dealing with such an obvious bad apple? people wonder. And because destructive heroes typically fashion their fiefs and achieve their results by intimidating co-workers, the abused colleagues may run for the exits.

In his training seminars, Mr. Sullivan could count on two things whenever he asked, “How many of you have had a destructive hero in your midst?” About half of those in attendance would raise a hand. And of those, “Almost 100 percent said the same thing: ‘We waited too long to deal with it, and it cost us a lot.’ ”

“Get rid of the brilliant jerk as fast as you can,” said Cliff Oxford, founder of the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs in Atlanta, who has registered the URL www.brilliantjerk.com and is writing a book to help companies deal with such employees (Mr. Oxford also wrote about the topic for The New York Times’s You’re the Boss blog.)

Mr. Oxford and others suggest the following: Confront the destructive hero with his or her unacceptable behaviors; get agreement that specific changes are necessary; and set a deadline of several months to make and maintain the turnaround. Along the way, they advise, be sure to document the changes or lack of changes that ensue, that way establishing grounds for dismissal and protection against retaliatory lawsuits.

Of course, managing a destructive hero is easier said than done. “It got to the point,” said the founder and president of a West Coast e-commerce crafts company with 45 employees and annual sales of $8 million, “that we had people saying: ‘I don’t want to work when she’s here.’ Or, ‘I love working here, but I’m going to quit because of my manager.’ ”

This company founder, who spoke on the condition that she remain anonymous, said the career of her destructive hero began with a typical honeymoon period. “She started here picking and packaging orders and was phenomenal,” she said. “Hard-working. Loyal. But as we started to grow, she kept telling me about problems with her manager. She’d text me at home at night.”

The destructive hero essentially forced out her manager and assumed her role. And continued to behave badly. “She was a faster puller — the best person on customer service — and that was part of the problem,” said the founder. “When a new employee wasn’t as good as her, she’d get mad. If we hired someone she perceived as a threat, maybe someone smarter, maybe more attractive, friendlier, she was not nice to them and she’d complain about them to me.”

It took the beleaguered boss nearly two years to resolve the situation. “I thought it was my fault she’s not a good manager,” she said. “I tried reading management books with her, not realizing it was something intrinsic and could not be changed.” Eventually, she said, she took “the chicken’s way out.” She moved her problem employee into an administrative position with less responsibility and increased the routine tasks until she quit.

About seven years ago, Scott McGohan, chief executive of McGohan Brabender, a health insurance and benefits broker with 120 employees and annual revenue of more than $25 million, hired a salesman who thrived.

“He was probably the best salesman in the history of the company,” said Mr. McGohan, whose company is based in Dayton, Ohio. “Honestly, we were kind of drunk on revenue, infatuated by the results. He was very successful at bringing business in the door — but very combative regarding how business moves through the organization.”

Sometimes, he would tell prospective clients that he could get them a financial projection by the end of the week, even though it generally took the company’s research analysts three or four weeks. Work backed up. Employees in the hero’s wake grumbled. But because the salesman had received so many accolades, the employees did not complain, at least not right away. Even when they did, Mr. McGohan found excuses to skirt the issues.

Eventually, however, he began to question whether the employee’s vaunted sales covered all of his hidden costs. “We got a team of people together and looked at how much time we were spending on this individual,” Mr. McGohan said. “How many meetings in H.R. How much leadership time was taken up talking about his problems. How much time he was costing various employees. It’s pretty simple. You just take the salaries of the people and the time they spend on the problem, and you come up with a number.”

That number did not include the obvious costs to morale. An exit interview indicated that McGohan Brabender had lost at least one employee because of its “hero.” “I was leading that person, I was his mentor, which is embarrassing,” Mr. McGohan said. “The other sad part is, about 15 years ago, I was the same guy.”

The son of the founder of the company, Mr. McGohan was then a high-flying salesman who was undermining his ordained path to the top with his own destructive behavior. It was not a superior who confronted him but his assistant, Victoria Rieger. “He was overpromising to clients, but he wasn’t the one who was going to have to deal with it. I was,” said Ms. Rieger, who told Mr. McGohan she was ready to quit.

“What would it take for you to stay?” he asked.

Ms. Rieger, who is a few years older than Mr. McGohan — and now works as his executive assistant — told him she would stay only if he worked with a life coach. She attended some of those meetings and reminded Mr. McGohan whenever he was “backsliding.” It worked.

Mr. McGohan said, “If you can’t get someone to admit they have a problem, you have no other choice than to let them go.”

But happy endings to destructive hero sagas are rare. “Teaching over 100 courses,” Mr. Sullivan said, “I’ve never had one person tell me they converted a destructive hero.”

Get an insider’s perspective on small-business ownership. Every Wednesday in your inbox, receive articles and blog posts about how business owners are coping with issues like marketing, management and finance. Sign up for the Small Business newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: The Long Odds of Reforming an Employee Who Is a ‘Destructive Hero’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe